Is it psychological or physical? Is it a combination of both?
In: Biology
Your brain and body like to run in a balanced state, usually this is called homeostasis. Taking drugs or drinking alcohol disrupts the balance your body tries to keep, so it starts making changes to compensate. Over time you experience less effects because your body has adapted to the drug or alcohol to maintain balance, but this also works the other way around. If you suddenly stop drinking or taking a particularly addictive drug that your body has become dependent on to maintain balance, you experience withdrawals.
A good example is caffeine. Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors in your brain. These receptors tell your body when it should be sleepy, but caffeine fits into these receptors and blocks adenosine from doing its job, making you feel more alert and awake. Over time your brain will create additional adenosine receptors to compensate, so you need to drink more caffeine to get the same effect. If you do not increase your dose, you will find yourself having to drink coffee just to feel “normal”. You don’t get that alert feeling you once had in the beginning.
If you suddenly quit caffeine, a few things will happen. First, your brain now has an overabundance of adenosine receptors, so you will get sleepy and sluggish very quickly until these extra receptors are removed. Second, caffeine acts as a vaso constrictor, so it constricts your blood vessels. Without caffeine, your blood vessels will dilate, and this is what causes caffeine withdrawal headaches.
With harder drugs and even severe alcoholism, addiction and their withdrawals can be very dangerous, as the disruption of balance can be so bad that your body cannot operate without the substance, and you could potentially die.
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